The Busy Fall Approaches...

Wed, 2008-08-27 04:35

For me, the approach of September has always meant a ramp up in activity. Sometimes it was learning, sometimes getting that first gig, sometimes getting ready to tour, finally now, getting ready to pound out some back to back to back shows. In the next 8 weeks, MODE will have Nickelback doing stadiums in Europe, The PBS special Joyful Noise, with the Boston Pops and assorted rock stars giving Handel the metallic treatment, We'll design lighting and projection for a new National Tour of WIzard of Oz, and we'll also knock out a multi city global projection event in support of James Nachtway's debut of a new documentary pictorial that will shake the perception of modern culture. And I have to find time to get my back to school cloths ! Have to check in with Patrick for a style tutorial...

Tonight Johnny Bradley and I are pre-programming Joyful Noise on the MODE ESP suite. Johnny is a graduate of the program at CalArts that Colleen and I teach in and he's fabulous. We're neck deep in Vector Works, ESP, and GrandMA.

It made us both wonder when do all those things come together ? With the advanced rendering capabilities available on the CAD side, it seems just a matter of time until they can also assimilate DMX values being thrown at them... Then imagine an open API, so any console could plug into the drafting/vizzing app. The constant back and forth between drafting and viz for updates and upgrades of the plot is arduous, and sometimes eliminates (painfully) progress that was made. It was food for thought.

At the same time we're vizzing the final content notes for projection elements are being worked out. Seems like now we author in HD by default, even if we're going to downrez later. The images are rich and beautiful. We're encoding them to MPEG2 in my favorite new Encoding Environment, Flip4Mac's Episode software. If you run mac rather than PC, then Episode might be a good alternative for your encoding needs.

Using the latest release of Hippotizer, 3.012, which is proving in every moment why Hippo just absolutely demolishes all other servers in comparison. The timeline interface has gotten incredibly robust, and the new show control abilities are making the server fit right into the high tech control environment for Joyful Noise. Can't wait to see the developments at LDI, in Hippo, and in everything else...

Going to use the HighEnd ShowPix on Joyful, and frankly I'm giddy to get my hands on them. They are going to be the beautiful jems atop all... Those fixtures you hope you can send a surprise with. I think that's the case here for sure.

Once again, I'll be trying to ramp up the BLOG frequency as we approach LDI, and as I thread my way through a bunch of killer projects...